


Liar Liar

by TheManSings



Category: Shameless (US), Shameless - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheManSings/pseuds/TheManSings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Set three years after the 5x12 finale, Mickey and the Gallaghers have not seen each other since he took off running from Sammi.</p><p>Now a vaccine gone wrong has spread a virus causing truth serum effects making the world a place where it is now impossible to lie. In the midst of this new chaotic world Mickey runs into a familiar face telling him the most important truth he's yet to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Red rover red rover, this isn’t over.

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Blood coloring the tattoos on his knuckles before licking it off again just for taste. He was starving. Anything with a flavor would do.

The shelves were bare and he hadn’t expected much more. There’d been talk that people were trying to reup their businesses but it never lasted longer than a month or so. They were on a time loop of birth and destruction and Mickey did his best to stay at the sidelines of it. Don’t pick a team, don’t lose the game.

It was a game.

“What are you doing?” The voice next to him hissed. “Don’t just stand there.” Dark hair fell into a small girls face from the force of her hands meeting his side in what could only be assumed as intent to move him. But she was small, and he was without much purpose and the food in here looked rotten or gone or shit—this was stupid.

“Let’s go home. It’s not worth it.” He queried another look around. The walls were each a different coloring from all the writing designated to another block on the look-out for another lost family member, another friend or lover that they desperately wanted to apologize to. “C’mon we’ll try again later.”

“No!” She looked at him with wild eyes. Whatever defiant anger and ambition that usually thread between every other emotion dulled completely and totally by desperation. She looked pathetic. He hoped she wouldn’t ask his opinion on the matter, after all, he’d have to tell her the truth.

The movies had got it all wrong. It wasn’t zombies that were gonna take them out, it was themselves.

On October 3rd, 5 months ago almost to the day—Mickey woke up and went to work and got punched in the face.

Doesn’t seem like it would be so wildly out of character especially since he’d kept to a natural habitat after leaving the SouthSide and continued working at strip clubs and shady underground fronts for rub and tug rings, but usually he did the hitting. Occasionally some guy would get a punch in but it was always for the right reason, he was too drunk or too handsy and Mickey had cut him off. And he could respect that, fair is fair, he could respect a good hit if he was sloppy enough to let it happen.

But this was different.

Because when Jake, a usual customer always slinking in on Friday nights to seek out the same girl asked Mickey how _his_ night was going, Mickey couldn’t stop himself from simply replying _great now that you’re here._ And when men find something they’re scared of they can’t let it go so naturally Jake pushed on asking what the fuck he meant by that and naturally, since the whole world was going to shit and no one quite knew it yet, Mickey replied _because I want to fuck the shit out you._

And then he got hit. Naturally.

The girl raised her head higher already aware that the next statement she was going to say would put forth an honest testament of weakness. “I’m hungry.”

So was he. They’d run out of actual food almost a week ago and surviving off of cereal since had not been as glamorous or adorably college as Mandy had always led him to believe when they were little.

“Alright. Shit.” Someone ran by the front window of the grocery store. It was hard to tell intent anymore these days, ironically. “One quick sweep and then we’re gone. Anything you find. We can’t afford to be picky.”

She nodded fast before taking off nearly invisible to their right. Her limbs nothing but sharp angles and shadows.

On October 3rd, after telling in full detail all the things Mickey wished Jake would do to him and every way he’d give it right back, the world fell into complete and total fucking chaos. Girls ran from the club. Customers threw drinks, everyone cried—on October 3rd, the most important thing in history happened.

The world lost its ability to lie.

“Vicki!” Mickey whisper screamed feeling the churn of his stomach from having been standing in one place for too long. “Let’s just go this doesn’t feel right.”

He rounded the corner and met the force of a fist to the side of his nose. The crunch was audible.

A guy maybe 6 feet tall stood clutching a bag of what he could only assume was the last decent shit in there. When everyone is so preoccupied with all the ways their lives have fallen apart over night, it’s hard to show up to work. It’s hard to keep any store open longer than a few days when you ask someone if they’ve paid for something and they literally have to answer ‘ _no’_ if they didn’t. The idea is simple, truth should be told all the time, don’t lie kiddies or it’ll get you into trouble.

But the outcome? The outcome is very different. What happens when you wake all sleeping dogs? You get anger with bleary eyes.

“I don’t want any trouble.” The guy steeled his gaze down to Mickey’s significantly shorter form.

The old saying of if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all—it was the only thing that kept people teetering on the side of life instead of death these days. One wrong sentence—it’s called brutally honest for a reason. Brutality knows endless forms.

Mickey stepped aside surrender in his hands as the other man stepped around walking out of sight. He knew how to pick his battles. He wasn’t about to die in a grocery store over a box of mac and cheese.

Vicki’s face peered out from around an end aisle. Her finger curling silently for him to come closer. She’d found something, of fucking course she did.

Grasped in her tiny hands were 3 packets of gummy sharks and he all but laughed out loud. “Struck gold.”

“It’s a gift.” Her smile lopsided and continuously melting out of place, like she didn’t want to pretend she was happy. Even if just for a second.

The glass shattered behind her in slow motion. The two of them hitting the ground reaction first before giving their minds enough time to catch up. A can of something exploding on the shelf behind him and suddenly he was right back in the Kash n’ Grab. Suddenly he was 17 and in love with Ian Gallagher and his head spun like he’d gotten up too fast or the adrenaline was just working its magic except he was hungry and he was going to faint and they needed to get out of there.

“Let’s go!” Vicki’s hand pulling his with more strength than he’d given her credit for that day, they headed now to the empty window. Stepping over glass and jumping over picked through garbage cans.

The world was over. They were a new breed.

A body connected with his hard sending them both falling back to the pavement. The force of the collision ripping Vicki’s hand from his and he found himself scrambling to be up first, to make the first move just in case it was possibly his last but the moment he got up to face the other man moving just as fast, he froze.

Because time does nothing to erase people, it just makes the reunion a further shock.

“Mickey?” Lip searched his face wide eyed. Huffing out breaths of a resigned need to keep running. “Holy fuck Mickey—“ He reached out a hand grabbing his left arm.

A bullet pierced through the air close enough to them to smell the burn and they ran. Vicki idling by for the momentary pause grabbed not one but two boys now and he knew that he was fucked. Knew the moment Lip grabbed his arm that the possibility for truth had never been so fucking terrifying.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything is a domino effect even when it’s not. That’s why you can’t kill off spiders, something else will always be effected. And there’s no greater slap in the face than realizing truly once and for all that good cannot happen without bad. We are all two sides of one coin. Take off a side and our value is gone.

Turns out without the value of a lie relationships lose focus. In the first couple of weeks when the virus started to spread, people were thrilled. Mostly wives convinced husbands were cheating or an already bitter high school teacher that wanted any excuse to negate a test score. They practically jizzed their pants at the idea of a one up.

Everyone wants to think they’re special. Everyone wants to be in on the know.

But it crumbled quickly. Like it always does. Like fuck if Mickey wouldn’t have forgotten about the fact that his neighbor had given him a dirty look a time or two but he didn’t need to know that it was cause he’d heard him having sex once three months ago and refused to encourage a ‘hell bound souls sinful behavior in homosexuality’ anymore than he had to.

He coulda just let that one slide.

And it wasn’t just that you only realized you didn’t want to know stuff after you knew it, it was the newfound lack of point to all human connection. A transparent truth takes out all the grunt work. No one wants to be friends if you’re left with nothing to hold for them.

It’s best to be with someone you hate these days, they’re a lot harder to offend anyway.

Lip chugged down the last two gulps of water before crushing the plastic bottle in his hand. Less of a show of bravado, more of disbelief. “Got anymore?” He still sounded out of breath. Maybe Mickey was holding up better than he thought.

“Yea but none for you.”

Vicki looked up toward him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor. The gummy sharks in different piles laid out before her. She kept rearranging the amount in each—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—constantly reorganizing how many they were allowed to eat a day. Addiction versus deprivation, the continuous struggle.

Lip took a few more steadying breaths while walking over toward the kitchen and ripping open the fridge. He wasn’t dumb enough to hide them there, they both knew that.

“So how long you been here?”

“What is this small talk?” He squinted an eye and swallowed down every echo of engrained anger until he tricked himself into feeling full. “Let’s not pretend we like each other now.”

Lip smiled while continuing his waltz around the apartment. “Oh I’m not pretending.”

The world looked like it existed normally outside. Windows high enough up could deceive anything and sometimes he thought maybe they were all overreacting. But they still jammed the door shut from the inside with a crowbar and he still looked at it every night, still wondering what it would feel like hitting him across the face.

Missed opportunities.

Lip opened a drawer in the table closest to the hallway and lifted up a deck of card. “You know what’s terrible?” He flipped the cardboard box over in his hands like he was about to open it up and smoke one. “No more truth or dare.”

Vicki giggled despite herself and Mickey shot her a look.

“Look—“ He took a step toward the door to his room in the subtlest attempt he could to block the way. At this rate, he wasn’t sure if Lip was gonna go take a nap in his bed or what with how at fucking home he seemed to be making himself. “I really don’t fucking want you here.”

He smiled smug walking closer. “Can I be honest with you?” His eyes round _fuck yous_ of false sincerity. “I don’t really care.”

Mickey leaned his shoulders back hitting the wall and watched as Lip continued walking circles. He looked like a dog trying to take a nap on a couch except this was his fucking couch and he probably had fleas. “Why are you in New York?”

Lip turned his neck keeping eye contact while still managing to scan a hand over a shelf. “Looking for someone.” His back tensed despite his flaunted nonchalance like it was dick size. Like they were in a competition he didn’t know about. Who could keep their apathy more. “Actually looking for a couple people but someone specifically I have a lead on.”

He seemed different. Not like Mickey had ever really paid attention to the elder Gallagher’s nuances before aside from when he wanted to punch him in the face but he seemed—out of place. A rag tag team without the team.

“Where’s the crew?”

He shrugged, his shoulders getting momentarily caught in his own tension. “Dunno.”

“You don’t know?” Panic started to rise in him like he still had the ability to react to something emotionally. Like any relationship past or present even mattered anymore. “What you just fucking took off?”

Lip’s eyes physically trying to stab him as he threw himself an inch away from Mickey’s face, breath ragged, presence fuming. “I didn’t leave _anyone_.”

There was always a rabbit hole to go down.

“Fiona and Debbie are still together.” He stood straighter creating a little more distance. “At least I think.”

Mickey wanted to ask, he’d never wanted to ask more in his entire life. But there’s something funny about knowing you’re going to get the truth.

Turns out, it was true—most people _can’t_ handle that.

“Who?” Vicki quirked an eyebrow, the spit smacking in her mouth no matter how slow she chewed.

Lip turned to her as if just seeing her for the first time and paused. The surge of animosity now dwelling to a drunken version of it, seeing everything in softer blurs.

He knew. She looked like Mandy.

“My sisters.”

“Oh.” The answer simple enough. Her faced turned back down to her hands and she took another shark away from Saturday’s pile. Apparently they were going sugar free that day.

Everything suddenly felt like a horror movie. Not the part when the guys guts get ripped out. Sorta like that except no one is dying except you still feel the drop in your stomach and the conflict of half empty half full. Not knowing if you’re gonna puke because you’ve had too much or too little and like the walls are sunburned and you can’t touch the floor.

No it’s not the part in the movie where the guy dies. It’s the part where you know he’d gonna. Right before. When the music builds and he opens the closet and the whole theater thinks that the killers inside but he’s not. He’s in the basement and the guy still has a few more scenes to go. That anticipation, the knowing before the knowing.

He wanted to ask.

Lip stood there staring, the smug look gone and now teetering on the edge of his own hysteria like he almost wanted to answer just as bad.

“Ian’s here.” He didn’t respond. Didn’t even flinch. “I heard he’s still with Carl. They took off when it all started, been the hardest to track down.” Mickey nodded swallowing the truth both figuratively and literally.

Vicki looked between the two of them now. A thousand questions playing out on her lips in the form of a blue shark.

“Mickey.” Lip started again, his gaze lowering. “I know we’re far from friends but I gotta say.” Here comes the closet, here comes the not yet death—“It’s a bad time to be in love.”


	3. Chapter 3

_“Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been 12 years since my last confession.”_

_Mickey snorted throwing a beer at where Ian stood arms outstretched in front of the church cross. “12 years?” The can echoed loudly against the floor ricocheting off his jacket. “You’re fucking 18 man.”_

_Ian turned a lopsided grin on his face, drunk with medicine and bipolar and 1 and a half beers. “Frank took me once.” His movements equal parts liquid and jarring as he threw himself back down into the pew next to where he sat. “God loves a good drunk.”_

 

He couldn’t sleep.

The sheets came off his body in aggravated assaults of being ripped away from a healing wound too soon. He should be sleeping, they wanted him to sleep, but he couldn’t.

His feet hit the floor cooling him heels up. The apartment more or less silent. A couple having sex somewhere near where sound traveled from and for a moment it felt like nothing had changed. The world was how it had always been.

_“Did you finish?”_

_“No.”_

Lip’s body was arched into a half moon on the couch. A pillow stuffed under his head that Mickey had wrangled from Vicki’s closet and some sorry excuse for a blanket on top of him. It was nothing more than a towel really, but unfortunately, it was the thought that counted.

Another empty water bottle sat near his head. He was too nice.

 He tongued the inside of his lip hitting the offensive part where he kept biting the same spot. Irritation in the form of your own self mutilation but really he was just clumsy. Clumsily repeating himself over and over in every action and every person.

Fucking Gallagher. Of course he was here. Of course. He didn’t even know which one he was talking about anymore.

“Something on your mind?” He spun seeing Lip’s eyes blinking just enough to show he was planning on staying awake. “You’re not watching me now sleep are you?”

“I was actually mid homicide. You’re the victim. Oops.”

“Ah.” Lip moved his arm reaching higher above his head to crack his spine. A long stitched slit under his bicep pulled at the skin still trying to heal. He hadn’t noticed it earlier. “Well I would let you get back to that but—“ He reached over to the side of the couch digging into the pocket of his jeans. “I got shit to do.”

Mickey watched the cigarette light up between his fingers, the smoke curling in absolute unhurried crawls toward the ceiling.

It took too much effort to be angry unwillingly. Once the playing field is leveled, it makes no difference what you’re fighting about, only who. The who is a harder idea to level no matter the assumed feelings, and that, maybe, is what the whole problem was.

As soon as you’re not upset, you’re not anything else either.

Lip pulled another drag on the cigarette before reaching over and handing a second to Mickey. Peace offerings in nicotine. White flags in a health hazard.

“Ever hear from Mandy?”

Lip shook his head holding off an exhale. “Ian talks to her still—sometimes.” He laughed either to himself or to Ian or to Mickey, it was hard to tell. “Fucker still gives me these looks sometimes like it’s my fault.” Another drag. “Probably is.”

Mickey nodded before reaching for the lighter. “Probably.”

“You talk to her?”

He shrugged walking to the side table to sit. “Nah. I don’t think she wants to hear anything I have to say.”

“Probably hard when her loyalties are split.”

Mickey used his thumb to crack each knuckle on his left hand. His pinky getting stuck to feel like his cartilage was doing nothing but rubbing together in an attempt to wear him down psychologically more than anything else.

Lip eyed him cautiously wondering how far the bait landed. Mandy and Ian forever infamous subjects that connected the two men sitting across from each other making small talk while the world burned. Course nothing was on fire. Course the only ones getting off easy were the ones who _did_ burn their bridges. Let the ash fall long before the opportunity presented itself to cross back over and retract all they’d ever said.

Rip off the band aid. Not the scab.

He didn’t need to confirm or deny anything. His scarring didn’t need to be affected by the pick of someone else, let alone Lip fucking Gallagher.

“So this must have been really hard for you.” His jammed pinky lagging from the rest of the circulating movement his hand made. “Telling the truth.”

Lip laughed making no effort to defend himself. “It started with Ian. We probably should have noticed sooner but it seemed like nothing super out of the ordinary considering.” The smile shockingly wavering for a moment like he didn’t want to hurt Mickey’s feelings anymore than he wanted to hurt his own. “I mean considering everything, but we all caught up soon enough. Turns out crazy equals honest so I guess we were just—“ Ash fell onto the couch, Mickey didn’t even care. “Ignorant.”

He snorted. “I coulda told you that.”

A pointer finger waggled toward his face. “Pretty sure you did.”

It was hard to know what to do with day to day life anymore. There’s a certain stagnation of existing without the need to die out but the willingness to do so. There is an astonishing lack of ‘what’s next’ when it’s a personal apocalypse, not a universal one.

Something rustled near the door, softly knocking against the movement of a body. Unintentional, sloppy.

A piece of paper slid through the bottom crack jamming itself into the base of the tire iron.

“The fuck?” Lip looked from him to the floor. “You got a pen pal?”

He walked over with a butterfly settling of confirmation in his stomach. The horror of having ever swallowed caterpillars only to later feel the flutter of new creatures. It wasn’t a fun saying, it should have been a bedtime story. There are worse monsters than the ones under your bed. All the time wasted making kids afraid of swallowing watermelon seeds, they should have been more concerned with love. Another person in caterpillar form, it’s inevitable to become a cocoon.

His hand reached down nearly setting the note on fire from cigarette embers before having the chance to read whatever version was today’s suggestion. Because he’d been reading rhymes for a week and Vicki has not been able to shut up about who it could be like he didn’t know. Like it wasn’t clear from the way every ‘e’ was left longer on the bottom line than the top.

The hand writing held neat examples of exactly how hard you have to work to not let go of someone.

 _Red rover red rover, I want this game over_.

“Mickey?”

He turned back to Lip, the pen ink smudging from fresh use.

“I’m coming with you to find him.”

He looked back to the note. The question mark lightly drawn like they both already knew the answer and it was just excess. Just filler. Ian’s perfect fucking handwriting.

You want to play Ian? Fine. You’ve got a game.


	4. Chapter 4

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that churches were the first to be abandoned. But it was. It was.

Course abandonment is a relative term when you are looking at a replacement of people. Because every church still seemed to have someone lingering inside either on permanent vacation from whomever they had broken or a pit stop along the ways of somewhere they needed to be. Everyone wanted a drink with god now that he had to give you his honest opinion.

Ironically, the only people who seemed interested in the pearly gates anymore were those who’d never cared in the first. The news was up in arms. The new world order—we’re all run by nonbelievers. Save your gods.

It’s easier to open your mind to the idea of a god than the feeling he’s left to get cigarettes and never coming home. Worse—that he comes home and tells you you’re adopted.

“This place smells terrible you know.” Carl walked up and down the rows of half burnt out red candles. “Why are we here?”

Ian smiled letting his muscles unbunch against the pew. “Look around.” His voice echoing off the walls and hitting no one but the two of them. “We get god all to ourselves.”

Carl turned, his eyebrows dipped in the genuine type of curiosity not one of the rest of them ever picked up. “Do you believe in god?”

“Do you?”

“I asked you first.” His hand knocked a tea light just enough to stutter its swipe across the table and he reached ungracefully and panicked to stop it before it shattered. People can stare down the barrel of a gun with cool composure but there is no superiority to jarred instinctual reaction of something about to fall.

Ian looked over letting his cheek rest on the wood. “Is my answer gonna change yours?”

Carl narrowed his eyes in concentration before shrugging. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He walked over closer to the windows craning his neck up toward the ceiling. Right where the stained glass stopped and turned back into the work of man.

It was funny, being in gods house without a key. An intruder never once asking if they were interrupting dinner, drinking all his wine and calling it blood. It was funny. The human race so quick to taboo a subject unless they could turn them into the appropriate type of vampire thief.

You’re only bad on your own.

“Hey—“ He sat up fast enough to feel dizzy. “You’ll be alright here by yourself?”

Carl remained transfixed by the paintings. Turning his head in minute angles of enthrallment without letting it be too obvious that beauty had gripped him. “Where you going?” He didn’t even turn around.

“I gotta go run an errand.”

His younger brother broke his gaze and turned to him with fractured mirrors reflecting someone’s good intentions somewhere in his eye. “Are we ever going to go back?”

Ian’s hands fell into his pockets and he only realized in the containment that he was shaking. The kind of chill that you wait for during the summer. The after fever break rack of rolling _almost_ cold under your skin. It leaves you vibrating.

“You know people say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Like we as a human race are conditionally flawed to repeat the same act of letting go of a good thing.” Carl jumped the two steps down from where a priest presents himself higher than the rest of the churchgoers. His feet landing hard enough that the candle he’d just barely pushed back toward safety rattled again to the edge and fell. Shattering on the floor red slivers of gods wishes.

“You’re saying we needed to leave them to realize we need them?” His words were always the most precise depictions of what he thought. Ian envied that.

“No.”

“Do you think that they needed us to leave to realize that about us then? That they miss us?”

Ian could feel a small hole opening in the lining of his pocket. He poked his pinky catching the stubbed jagged edge of his nail against the seam and working it forward just a little harder. It made no sense. This was his only decent jacket.

“I think that saying is shit.”

He leaned down reaching for the bible that sat behind the pew before him. Most were gone now, like maybe people didn’t want to come here and get the absence of answers but they could still read what they wanted to know. Put it down in print, make it permanent.

The pages were thinner than he thought they’d be with ink littering every centimeter of both sides and little to know room for your own input. His hands a shaking inability to write anything so small that it would fit into the quarter inch of blank space at the top of the page.

Carl walked over to sit down next to him. “What are you doing?”

He flipped through the pages momentarily mesmerized by the way the words could almost resemble a flip book cartoon. “I need a piece of paper.”

Carl kept watching, making no move to ask another question or help find something better to write on—just watching and waiting to see what would happen next. A true observer. He always gets the short end of the stick with recognition to feel.

Ian reached the back end cover of the book and looked back to his brother. “You got any paper?”

“I’ve got an empty cigarette carton.” Too poetic.

He got up replacing himself with the word of god on the pew and stood dead center between all the empty rows. “This is stupid!” His voice rising to a ridiculous level of a pissing contest with someone he couldn’t see. “Red rover red rover I want this game over.”

A small hysterical blip of laughter stayed layered against his throat, not wanting to actually meet the world.

“Oh shit wait—“ Carl pushed himself up off from where he sat and around Ian’s own frame now standing with both arms out like _bring it_. _Give me your best shot._

Carl stepped over to their backpacks left leaning against the altar and reached around into the front pocket of his own before pulling out a receipt. The empty side of potential becoming the most beautiful thing in there.

He reached out his hand and suddenly it occurred to Ian that the only one of them guaranteed to not go to hell is Carl. “Here.”

“Thanks.” The concentration to keep his hand steady made all movements a slow crawl of organized and exactly pinpointed steps.

Carl nodded. “Hey Ian—“ His adams apple jumping with each exaggerated swallow of what he wasn’t sure was appropriate to want to know about. “Are we ever going to tell them? You know— _why_ we left? I just don’t want them to think it was them—I mean it _was_ them but not because of them you know?”

He dragged one of two semi working pens they still had across the receipt watching the words he’d screamed mirrored back in ink.

_Red rover red rover._

They spent the next few hours deciding between whether they wanted to split the left over turkey sandwich they still had for dinner. Carl saying that he was pretty sure it was rotted and Ian saying that they could pick out the meat. Go vegetarian for a day and eat the lettuce and cheese.

They ended up opening a new pack of cigarettes and eating a bag of chips instead.

And sometime after Carl fell asleep in the confessional twisted into a pretzel of desperate comfort and exhaustion, Ian grabbed that receipt and a cigarette for the road and left the church doors closed and crowbar jammed behind him. He wouldn’t be gone long, Carl would never even have to think about the fact he’d not been able to let his own intentions go.

The apartment building was exactly like every other on the street. No defining feature of destiny or _of course he’s in there_ that every person hopes to see when they finally reunite with an unhealed section of themselves. The terrible revelation that it is only as important as it is to you, that you are the bigger plan.

He took each stair carefully walking down the halls until Lip’s voice could be heard through a door and Ian sucked in his breath. _Fuck_. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

_“It started with Ian. We probably should have noticed sooner—“_

He kneeled down to the floor placed both hands on the ground and became eye level with the couple centimeter wide space where he could see the tire iron jammed. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before slipping the paper through and making no notion to go entirely unheard.

And when he jumped down the front apartment steps three at a time he wanted to go back and wake Carl up to tell him that that saying was shit because it doesn’t take losing someone to realize that you loved them. To never trust someone who can only realize it after the fact because there is no clarity in a new wound but only in infection.

The whole world was infected and he did not miss the irony in that. Did not underestimate the power of seeing Mickey through a bullet hole cracked window the exact moment he hit the ground splitting open his knee bleeding all over the pavement. Infection.

_Red rover red rover I want this game over._

We was ready to OD on antibiotics.

Translate: I love you. I'm sorry. Come find me.


End file.
